Drunk and Disorderly
by Waldo
Summary: “So… havin’ a good night, are we?”


**Title **: Drunk and Disorderly

**Author **: Waldo. ( **kwaldo12 **)

**Rating **: PG

**Pairing **: Slightly Lee/Kara

**Spoilers **: Hand of God

**AN **: Part of this was written before I got to see the missing scene where we find out exactly when Socinus gets freed... so... ignore that bit of semi-canon for a minute, 'kay:)

**Drunk and Disorderly**

**By: Waldo.**

"We should do something."

"Be my guest."

"We can't just let him wander around like that all night. He could get hurt."

"He's just a little drunk. I don't think tripping over his own feet is going to be life-threatening."

The three mechanics watched as Apollo circled his Viper, his feet dragging on the deck, his gait unsteady.

Tyrol sighed. "Someone should call the commander."

"Yeah, that's exactly what my career needs," Socinus muttered, "Getting the CAG busted for drunk and disorderly. I just got out of the brig, thanks."

Tyrol shrugged, "The commander is also his father. Who else should we turn him over to? He can't stay down here. It's not safe."

Cally bit her lip. "Don't call the commander," she finally sighed. "I think I have a better idea." She walked to the phone muttering, "If _I_don't get killed first."

"What are you doing?" Tyrol called after her.

"Getting the one person who can deal with him without getting him trouble." She picked up the receiver.

"Yeah," Socinus whispered to Tyrol, "And this is where I leave. I don't want to be any part of anything that wakes up Starbuck."

"Yeah, I think it's time I make a perimeter check," the chief opined. "Make sure all the hatches are closed and whatever."

"I'll keep you company," Socinus volunteered.

Cally was waiting for someone in the barracks to pick up the receiver so she covered the mouthpiece, "Cowards!" she shouted to their retreating backs.

"I'm really sorry, sir, but we couldn't think of who else to call." Cally went on the defensive as soon as Starbuck cleared the landing bay hatch. "The Chief wanted to call the commander – him being his dad and all – but we didn't want to get him trouble."

"Cally," Starbuck said curtly, cutting off the explanation. "Don't worry about it. I wasn't asleep." She stopped and watched Lee who was still wandering in circles around his Viper. "And I haven't had this much fun since the worlds ended."

Cally stood there gaping at the wide grin on Starbuck's face, wondering if it wouldn't have been safer – for Apollo at least – if she had called the commander.

Starbuck hobbled over to the wing of Apollo's Viper and leaned against it with her arms crossed. She waited until he rounded the corner and ended up face to face with her. "So… havin' a good night, are we?"

Lee's grin was both huge and lopsided. "I," he said with great exaggeration, "blew up a Cylon base. All. By. My. Self."

"Yes you did," Starbuck said indulgently. "And we're all very proud of you."

She shook her head at the way he beamed at the compliment.

"It was kind of pretty. The explosion," he clarified as if she were the one having trouble keeping track of the conversation. "And really loud. How do you think it was possible that I heard an explosion in space?"

"I have no idea."

"I blew it up, Lieutenant!" he shouted triumphantly, smacking his hand on the wing of the Viper.

"Boom, sir," Kara tossed back, laughing.

"You said I suck," Apollo pouted.

Kara struggled to keep a straight face. "I never said you suck."

"You said I'd frak it up."

"I told you _not _to frak it up." She wondered why she was even bothering to argue with him as drunk as he was.

"'Cause you thought I _would _frak it up." For all of his insistence on arguing with her, he obviously wasn't angry.

Kara sighed. "I was _worried _you'd frak it up." She reached across the wing and took his hand. "I'm used to being the one on the suicide runs. And the fleet needs its CAG a lot more than a random, frak-up pilot. It would have been a pretty tragic loss if you hadn't made it back, me… I'm expendable."

Lee blinked for a second, the seriousness of what she was saying starting to sink part-way past the alcohol fogging his brain. "Okay, when I'm way more sober we're gonna need to talk about _that _attitude."

Kara had known he wouldn't let that go the minute the words were out of her mouth. Fortunately he was drunk enough to be easily distracted. "Fine, but now Chief Tyrol is a little worried that a spark from a welding torch could touch off your breath and we'd loose half the ship."

Lee snickered. "Yeah. I'm a little drunk."

"A little?" Kara teased. "Come on, I'll drag you home for a change."

"Oh shit!" Apollo blurted out, then he whispered, still rather loudly, "I'm the CAG!"

"Don't worry," Kara said shaking her head, "I think your secret's out."

"No, you don't get it. I'm the CAG! I can't be drunk!"

"I don't think the way your body metabolizes alcohol changes when you get the cluster, so, you know, you _can _be drunk. And, clearly, you _are _drunk. So let's just get you in bed." She grabbed her cane in one hand and took Lee by the elbow with the other.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Lee asked as he let her steer him out of the hangar.

"Yeah, time of my life. Getting dragged out of bed to drag your ass to bed." She caught him as he stumbled over the raised hatchway.

He smiled at her as she helped him regain his balance. "I'm sorry. You shouldn't have had to come chasing after me."

She finally couldn't control the impulse any more and she reached up and ruffled his hair, he was just an adorable drunk. "I owe you more than a few. Besides, Cally said it was either me or your dad."

Something about that struck Lee as insanely funny. "Oh… he'd be pissed. Can you imagine? The CAG up for drunk and disorderly?"

"You're not so disorderly. Just drunk."

"You'd know the difference," Lee giggled.

"You know, it's not too late for me to call him," she threatened.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Apollo capitulated.

They set off down the hall, both staggering, though for vastly different reasons. Starbuck leaned hard on her cane – the long day making her knee throb even more than normal - and laughed as Lee hugged the wall as he maneuvered his way through the corridors.

She got him back to the bunkroom, despite the three wrong turns he tried to make. She quietly thanked the gods that the room was sparsely populated, but she still put a finger to her lips. "Let's try to do this quietly."

Lee nodded and put his own finger up. "Shhh…"

"Right." Kara pulled a chair out from the table and put him in it. "Get yourself out of your flightsuit. You'll be in enough pain in the morning. Last thing you need is trying to get out of your flightsuit when all that alcohol decides it needs to make an emergency exit."

Lee looked at her in confusion.

"In the middle of the night, when you have to pee, you do not want to be fighting with your flightsuit," she said slowly and with great enunciation.

He nodded, "Right, right, right…" He seemed to have a difficult time saying things just once while he was half-crocked. She wondered if the double talk went with the double vision.

Kara hobbled to her bed and flopped down on the edge of it. She hadn't been lying when she told Cally she hadn't been asleep, but it was a near thing. She'd been in her rack waiting to hear Lee stumble in, seemed all fifty-thousand people in the fleet wanted to thank him and congratulate him personally. She threw her cane down on the floor.

"Your knee hurt?" Lee asked as he fumbled for an unreasonable time with one of the latches on his flightsuit.

Kara wanted to deny it; she wanted to blame him for it, but finally just said, "Yeah."

"I could–" Lee stopped short, blinking.

"You could what?" Kara asked, exhaustion creeping into her voice.

"Nothin', nothin'… there!" he crowed as he finally got the stubborn latch to yield.

"Don't 'nothin' me. What were you going to say?"

Lee shrugged out of the top half of his flightsuit. "I'm not that drunk."

"Wow, discretion under the influence. I am impressed. You might want to take your boots off before you try to get your legs out," she added helpfully.

"I'm always discreet, even when I'm drunk. Unlike some people," he poked.

"Oh please, most people are still waiting for me to learn to shut the hell up when I'm sober." She lay back on her bed wondering if Lee would actually fall out of the chair before he got out of his second boot.

He managed to get himself undressed and threw his flightsuit in the vicinity of the hamper. He missed the wide-open container, but couldn't seem to stir himself enough to go pick it up.

Kara craned her neck around to see what he was looking at. " _Now _you're drunk and disorderly. Go pick up your mess." She had to laugh at the idea of Lee being messy. There was something in that idea that her brain just would not compute. Lee had perfectly straight folds in his boxer shorts.

Lee staggered over and slammed his flightsuit into the hamper and then staggered back to his bunk. He stared at the ladder for a minute and then looked down at Starbuck. "You know… whoever thought stacking people up in a room like this was a good idea, must have never been drunk in their lives." Lee appraised the ladder to his bunk with a look of concern. "Either that or he always got the bottom bunk."

"You worried you're gonna fall out of bed, Apollo?"

"Uh…"

Kara giggled. "Fine. Get your drunk ass over here." She scooted over and pulled him down onto the bed next to her. It was only fair. He'd done more to keep an eye on her many times in the past. Besides, it would make it that much easier to make his life hell in the morning when he'd be sure that the Cylon base was exploding again… in his head.

He lay down next to her and snuggled his back against her front, unconsciously.

Starbuck rolled her eyes. "This is gonna make great blackmail material," she whispered into his ear. "The great CAG Apollo is a snuggly drunk."

He turned his head to try and see her even though she was directly behind him. "Should I move?"

He seemed so panicked that she had to laugh. She threw her arm over his waist. "No. You're fine," she assured him.

After a few quiet minutes, during which Starbuck was fairly sure she could hear Lee's head spinning, she leaned towards him and whispered in his ear, "Lee? Oh, Lee-ee?"

"Hm?" he whispered sleepily.

"What were you going to say before?"

"Before what?"

Kara blinked for a minute, "Before _now _. When you were taking your flightsuit off. I said my knee hurt and you started to say you could do something."

"Still not that drunk," Lee muttered back.

Kara poked him in his very sensitive ribs. He flinched but said nothing.

She raised the edge of his tanks and tickled him.

"Kara! Stop!" he howled.

"What were you going to say?"

"I'm drunk. I take the twenty-third. Anything I say can and will be used against me. Especially by you."

"Damn straight," she affirmed. "Now, to hell with the twenty-third. Spill." She pulled his tanks up again.

"Stop! Okay, okay…"

"Tell,"

"It's stupid, and I'm drunk. I just want to make that clear."

"Clear as a bell. Spill."

"I was gonna say I could kiss it better."

This time it was Starbuck howling in laughter. "Yeah right. No, seriously, what were you going to say."

Lee shook his head and fixed his shirt. "Nevermind. If you're not going to believe me…"

Kara propped herself on one elbow. "You're serious?"

"I'm _drunk _," Lee said as if that answered everything.

"You're cute when you're drunk, you know that?" For whatever reason, she found the idea that he wanted to kiss her 'boo-boo' better endearing as hell.

"You won't think so any more when you're sober."

Kara patted his shoulder and lay back down. "I _am _sober, Lee. _You're _drunk."

"Right. Why are you telling me that? I know that."

Drunk and sleepy, Starbuck realized. Her fun was about to come to an abrupt end. She figured he had about two more minutes before he either fell asleep or threw up. It was going to be a toss up as to which came first. Given that he was mashing his face into the edge of her pillow, she hoped fervently for the former. "Okay, you know that. You might want to try and get some sleep. You're going to be fraking miserable in the morning."

Something hit the curtain to Starbuck's bed, where it was shoved down by her feet. A voice that sounded vaguely like Crashdown's yelled sleepily, "We're all gonna be fraking miserable in the morning if you two don't shut the hell up and let us sleep! Some of us have early patrol, you know?"

Starbuck and Apollo both giggled. Apollo held his finger up to his lips again and slurred, "Shh… remem'er?"

Starbuck sat up and pulled the curtain closed. Before she could lie back down again, she noticed that Apollo was completely out.

She rolled her eyes. At least he'd passed out before he'd gotten sick. His morning was going to suck. Hers, on the other hand, was going to be fabulous. She had ten years of payback to start delivering. She looked down at him again as she settled in for the night. She could be charitable, she supposed. He'd dealt with way worse from her drinking binges. At various times she'd hit him, sworn at him, come on to him, passed out on him, thrown up on him and cried on his shoulder. Not to mention the times he'd bailed her out of hack. She snuggled up against his back, and tried not to enjoy it too much when he wiggled back against her, mumbling in his sleep.

He really had done quite a job on that Cylon base. And he was an adorable drunk. She wondered if maybe just a few of those rumors she'd been hearing about the two of them might have a basis after all. She supposed he had to be rather fond of the man if she was letting him drool on her pillow like he was.

She could be nice; run interference for him in the morning if anyone got obnoxious. She could let him sleep and do the morning briefing for him. She could be sure there was aspirin and water waiting for him when he finally did regain consciousness.

She shook her head again. Who was she kidding? A hung-over Apollo was going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity. She'd be a fool to pass it up.


End file.
